One way or the other: that seems to be my motto these days. But it isn't gently leaning one way or the other, but rather lunging and falling from side to side like a drunken sailor on the deck of a ship hemmed by rough seas. Then again, perhaps a drunken sailor on a ship in rough seas would walk straight - one force counteracting the other. Just forget the sailor.

Let's talk about going to extremes, synonym-free.

Back to the track we started on: I have become more health conscious. Last year, I spent the summer walking, eating properly, doing various forms of exercise and generally being a healthy and health-conscious person. Adversely, this summer I did the exact opposite, instead making every attempt to lounge and ruin my health at the first opportunity. As both summers really show very little difference in the end result, I have deduced that the truth of the matter is more in the long-term effects of life, not one season at a time. Were I to select some middle ground, not a high road or a low road, I am quite sure I could stick to it. However, I am either crusader or dragon, finding no way to couple the two into a sensible middle ground.

Meanwhile, in my more healthy vein, I am now eating breakfast, a meal that so often eludes the single male. Breakfast is a family meal for the most part, in my opinion. As is supper, or dinner if you prefer. This is confusing. As I was growing up, we ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Soon after entering the job world, I stopped eating breakfast and started having lunch and dinner. That still perplexes me. Why did the meals' names change? As for the acquisition of my lost breakfast, I do think I have more energy now than I had a couple weeks ago. The early meal seems to give me more strength. Why, I can type with the strength of 10 men, erase like an athlete and read like an Olympic God.

Alright, so strength is not something that is required of one in my profession. That is not my fault. I still prefer to feel like I could be strong, should the need arise. You never know when you might need to move a paper weight or something. My back aches just thinking about it. So I went looking for other ways to improve my health. I purchased a bottle of multi-vitamins, the kind with 10 million milligrams of everything in them. If 100 milligrams of something is good, then 10 million should be super dooper. I took my first vitamin at about 8 p.m. and noticed that I had a bit of trouble going to sleep. In fact, I was down-right fidgety. I wiggled and wiggled "like a worm in hot ashes," as my father says from time to time. Finally getting to sleep about 1 a.m.,

I awoke promptly at 5 a.m. with the alarm blaring its monotonous call in my left ear. Bleary eyed and not so bushy- tailed, I got out of bed and popped another vitamin. I chased it down with "12 cups" of coffee. Why is it that the coffee maker says you are making 12 cups of coffee, when it only fills up about three and a half reasonably sized cups?

I ate my breakfast: toast and eggs. The vitamin gave me absolutely no charge at all. Maybe they only work at night. I start taking vitamins and actually feel much worse than I did before. Go figure.

My next brainstorm came when I heard on the news that the average man has literally pounds of undigested red meat in his body when he dies. What a terrible thought - all that wasted steak. So I decided to start eating more chicken and fish and less red meat. I went to visit a friend near Galax, Va. last weekend and he had his grill out. He was expecting me.

"What are you having?" I queried.

"Steak. I knocked the horns off and wiped his tail and tossed him on a plate, just like you like it." That was the end of the no red meat diet. He gave me a plate of his mystery beef. I say mystery because there were about four different kinds of meat on the grill, whatever he happened to find in the leftover bin at the grocery store. I think I got a nose or something, it was tough as whit-leather. After chewing the first piece for about 30 minutes, I decided that maybe I should switch to an all-beef diet, at least if I kept eating with this guy. Chewing it alone could help a fellow lose 10 or 15 pounds and make his jaw muscles turn into dual iron bars.

"How's the steak?", he asked.

"Mmm," I answered. I would have spit it out, but I was afraid it might kill his dog. Then again, it was about like one of those rawhide chew toys.

I looked at the dog and it whimpered and backed away. It had eaten the meat before, I gathered.

"You like that, huh?" He asked with a wink. "Come back tomorrow, we're having deer meat."

Oh boy, I thought, smiling as I chewed ambitiously.

So much for my diet.

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